


if it takes fighting a war for us to meet

by villainess



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7702096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villainess/pseuds/villainess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next morning, it became clear that the rumours of a siege were unfounded. Charles VIII and the French forces had arrived, <i>anno domini</i> 1494, in a huge snaking convoy. Envoys ran an almost ceaseless river between the camp and the city, currying favour and promises of peaceful passing on slips of folded paper if the demands enclosed were met with calm acquiescence. </p><p>The flap opened one day, soon after their arrival in early November, and Grantaire turned to look out of habit, the worsening infection in his leg making him weak, listless and desperately looking for distractions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if it takes fighting a war for us to meet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariuspondmercy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariuspondmercy/gifts).



> This was originally a birthday gift for mariuspondmercy, and an hilariously stalled Les Mis Baby Bang entry. I've quietly slipped it into the collection. Please kindly keep in mind that any research for this setting was limited to a skim read of exactly one (1) wikipedia page.

His father’s last words to him ring louder than the reverb from the practice cannon fire as the pike pierces his calf.

***

The wound is festering. He can smell it. No one else seems to notice over the permanent miasma of infection and rot, undercut as it is by horse shit and gunpowder. Should he survive with his leg still hinged below his knee as the heavenly father intended, he’d never again walk without a limp. He thinks it will be sawn off in a few days with a curt “can’t be helped” and “here, take this belt between your teeth.” He imagines the bloated, detached limb being taken and burnt to and spare the camp a more serious pandemic.

The sunbursts from beyond the curtain flap remind him that there is life – in either heaven or hell – beyond the canvas purgatory of the makeshift triage tent he finds himself languishing in.

Men bustle in and out while boys running errands as pages or apprentices scurry round and round. He catches one such page that had been rushing up and down and in and out of the tent for a solid ten minutes and begs him for some wine. He narrows his eyes appraisingly, and Grantaire favours him with a watery smile. This seems to tip the balance of the boy’s willingness to follow through on a task not given to him by his master into Grantaire’s favour. The boy gives him an imperceptible nod before continuing his passage between pallets, under legs, and past mountains of questionably clean linen and ranges of medical simples. 

Grantaire waits, and eventually, after he awakes from a fitful nap, he finds a sloshing wineskin resting on his belly. He uncaps it and breathes in the pungent smell. The wine has been watered down to merely a child’s cordial, but it’ll do. He drinks deeply, and settles down.

He enquires after the progress of the campaign outside from the physicians that traipse in.

“The word is that Charles VIII and the French are marching down from Genoa, intent on establishing a siege of Florence.”

He quirks an eyebrow at the physician. He cuts quite a figure – fat, marked by fatigue, and still wearing his best doublet and hose, in the middle of a vanguard camp.

“In mid-November? A winter campaign?”

The physician sighs. “Not an open campaign you dolt, a winter siege. The city will be starved out before Christmas.”

Grantaire blinks. A winter siege would be unnecessarily cruel and arrogant. All of the defining vices of men bound up into one convenient show of military power.

The physician takes his silence for incomprehension.

“God above. I knew your father, and heard him complain about you more than once, young man. Charles is no fool, he knows that a winter siege will decimate us without undue cost to his own troops. Surely you sat at your own father’s knee while he was at his sums enough to see even the most basic logic in this? God rest him, he doesn’t have to see you lying here, on death’s door because of a pike drill accident.”

Grantaire did not know this man, but his father was an important de’ Medici vassal and a gifted mathematician, and he did not doubt the physician’s assessment of him, his father’s opinions about his son, and his current pathetically lamentable position.

His hands itched for vellum and chalk. He settled for clenching his fingers around the thin blanket thrown over him. The physician continued to bustle between the other pallets, mostly empty as they were, occupied by a few unfortunates struck down by the dangerous vapours that congregated and spread pollution in camps where bodies were forced into such close contact without proper bathing. He was mumbling under his breath as he bustled about checking on his few patients, and Grantaire didn’t particularly care to carry on the conversation.

“Hmm.” Grantaire said aloud to himself, in a voice of mock pensiveness. “Perhaps the walls and grain stores will hold until summer and the French will melt, like so much enchanted snow.”

The physician snorted in frustration, raised his eyes and palms to the sky, and swept from the tent.

Grantaire smiled.

***

A few days later, the vanguard camp that was clustered in the shadow of the city’s walls was in a state of high agitation.

Rumours spread about the French army’s intent to carve a violent swathe down the length of the peninsula on their march down to Naples. These rumours jumped from soldier to soldier and pikeman to officer, borne along on the currents of nervous energy and restlessness that come with waiting for a real battle.  Some swear Genoa has been practically raised.  The women and children of the city left widows and orphans, subjected to the worst crimes of invasion men can commit. Others said that the old Pope had, before his death, prayed for Charles’ speedy progress to Naples on his behest, and towns and cities that stood in his way fell to swiftly to the plague.

Grantaire added to this misinformation in any way he could. Entertainment was scarce for a bedbound man who was simply waiting to lose a leg, and he delighted in embellishing the few reports he felt sure to be fact. The reports came into the tent on the lips of physician and fellow soldiers, the fear of violence slinking in at their heels. He swore up and down that the Swiss mercenaries recruited to boost French numbers were raised like the fearsome Spartans of old. They were hardened by harsh training, Grantaire told a few skittish pages. He gesticulated to underscore the point that they were nearly invulnerable to any known weapon, except the blade of a noble soldier blessed by the kiss of his virgin beloved.  The boys he told this particular tall tale replied with a solemn nod, eyes wide, and each promised dutifully to repeat it word for word to his master. To a physician’s apprentice, he said that the Swiss mercenaries where grown from the scattered teeth of a dragon.

However, to a frightened soldier who seemed to be succumbing to a long battle with a disease he brought with him to the camp, he said they were merely magical ants who had pledged to follow Charles, but the pact between them would be broken once he commanded them to attack, for they were sworn against violence. After Charles’ foolish mistake, they would shrink back to their tiny former bodies, pact broken and unable to launch even the smallest attack on a pair of sturdy boots. The young man was pale and shaking, struggling to draw breath. Grantaire could see bubbles flecked with red clinging to the side of his lips. A laboured laugh found its way out of the poor boy’s throat.

“Look at me.”

The young man did, even in the dull light filtered through the canvas, Grantaire could see that his eyes were glazed and agonised.

“What’s your name?”

“M-Marco” he gasped out, eyes scrunching closed as he summoned the energy to control the weak gasps of air and mould them into words.

“Peace Marco. Knowing when to withdraw is the most important part of a soldier’s training, a mark of his bravery. Rest now. I hear heaven is nothing but an endless dream, full of your greatest pleasures. In any case - better than this cesspit, right?” he gestured around at the bare canvas walls of the tent, grubby and watermarked.

Marco managed a small smile.

“Thank you. For the company. And the stories.” Marco’s eyes were unfocused and a string of sticky blood slid along his lips as he smiled. After this brief exchange, Grantaire heard him linger. He drew rattling, hacking breaths for what seemed like unending hours - tears, sweat and blood streaking his face all the while.  Grantaire could see that his limp, dull auburn curls were matted with sweat and clung to his pale neck and grimy linen-clad shoulders.

Sometime in the night, physicians placed a sheet over his face, and Grantaire turned away, wiping at his eyes.

***

Grantaire shifted uncomfortably on his pallet. His leg was worsening, and he privately suspected nothing would be done until the rot was had set in so deep that amputation and prayer were his only options.

Perhaps the physician was right. Perhaps it was best that his father was dead. The shame of a lame fool for a son would not do well at the de’ Medici palaces. He thought of Marco, the young man from the day before, wishing he could have walked the few steps over to his pallet to hold his hand. Offer water. Wipe his brow. He had slept badly and dreamt of the terrible sounds of life and death warring in the young man’s lungs; of Marco’s frightened eyes. He’d been far too young, perhaps sent away by an ashamed father to cover his illness, and in the hopes of giving him the opportunity of a noble death on the battlefield. He’d spent the day restless with compassion and now night was falling, and the golden glow of the setting sun couldn’t warm him in the face of his nervous thoughts or shift the despair born of a day of listless inoccupation.

Just then, a friendly face pushed through the flap, calling at a few apprentices for some clean bandages.

“Alessandro!” Grantaire cried. “What a surprise my friend, are you well? Why do you call for bandages?”

Alessandro laughed, his green eyes gleaming in the evening half-light that cast long shadows on the canvas walls of the tent. “You know me and you know my luck. I caught my blasted sleeve on something and it tore all the way down to my very skin. It’s a small scratch though, nothing a clean bandage won’t fix. My poor mistress won’t appreciate having to fix my doublet though.” He ran a fine-boned hand through his dark brown hair and smiled ruefully.

Alessandro looked again at Grantaire, really seeing him now, and winced a little. His usually genial face scrunching up in concern.

“I’m doing better than you, in any case. What happened to have laid you, of all us high-flying _giovanotti_ so low?”

Grantaire let a slow breath out of his nose. “Pike drill accident.”

Alessandro blinks.

“Well now, that seems like a story. Give me a moment, I have a wineskin back at my tent that wants to hear this.”

Alessandro returns with two wineskins and a candle. He leant down and passed one to Grantaire, who immedately took a long, grateful draught of full-bodied wine from the neck of the skin handed over to him. Alessandro watched him all the while, now having settled himself next to the palette, smiling faintly.

“So.”

“So” Grantaire sighs, “it’s been a while.”

“Yes it has. You’ve kept yourself away, and I’ve missed you.” Alessandro drew himself closer to Grantaire, carefully balancing a small candle stub in a plain brass holder in one hand. The flickering light caught the gold in his eyes, and drew it out. His purple doublet shifted in colour from deep burgundy to a bottomless black in the sliding shadows. Alessandro’s fingertips fluttered lightly over Grantaire’s knee, reminding him of a dozen other far more pleasurable nights they’d spent together.

“You know I was off as an apprentice. It… didn’t end well for me” Grantaire felt his eyes drop in embarrassment as he admitted his failure to a man whose opinion he always treasured.

“I see. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have the talent, you slacker.” Alessandro took a sip of his own wine, smiling over the lip of the wineskin. His eyes shifted and became far more serious than Grantaire was accustomed to seeing in his jovial friend.

“You let your father still hold too much sway over you” he said. “He’s rotting in the ground, and it’s not your duty to join him. Live, Grantaire.”

Alessandro was always incredibly perceptive, Grantaire mused. He took a sip to cover the swell of emotions the exchange was conjuring in him. The second it took him to swallow the mouthful bought him an extra moment to consider his reply. They had been friends since their boyhood. Their fathers worked together as moneylenders, and the two boys studied and played together regularly. They were an inseparable pair. Alessandro was lithe and delicate where Grantaire was solid and ungainly, and he caught the eye of boys and girls alike. Alessandro, for his part, promised that no matter what, Grantaire would be his dearest friend. The promise was sweetly made, and sealed with a kiss. Grantaire remembered the swarm spring day, in the shadow of an arch that connected an alley to a tiny piazza, and the wine embellished the impossibly warm flush that Grantaire remembered feeling radiate from where his friend’s lips touched his. As they grew, they’d discovered their desires together, learnt the secrets of their bodies and kept those secrets close to their hearts. Alessandro was to follow in his father’s footsteps, and Grantaire was always envious of his obvious talent with numbers. In their shared lessons, his own pen seemed only adept at finding the perfect poetic device to describe the way Alessandro’s face showed the shift of thoughts as he worked through a particularly complex equation; the exact slope of the line of his nose in a sketch. He wondered if Alessandro kept the poems Grantaire had written for him. He toyed with notion of asking him now, in this golden moment of a fortuitous re-meeting, but found himself unable to form the question.

The calm that came with just sitting near Alessandro, sharing wine, had Grantaire lost in his memories. He recalled how they passed blissful months together, but eventually, that seemingly eternal spring shifted to winter. Alessandro refused to marry as his father wished, on account of his affection for Grantaire, and their fathers swiftly conspired to separate them. Grantaire’s own father allowed him to apprentice himself to an artist, just to get him away from Florence and his “meddlesome friend.” The relationship between their fathers soured, with Grantaire’s father wasting no time in blaming Alessandro for the embarrassment, accusing him of being a “flirt and a trollop.” The heartache had been nigh unbearable for Grantaire. The apprenticeship he had begged for was not what he expected. He was away from home, away from Alessandro, and his master recognised his considerable talents, but refused to let him do little more than carry supplies, mix paints, and work on the backgrounds. Disheartened, he slunk home again, resolving to better please his father. He fumbled through clerking, until his father’s death. He’d then signed himself up to the army. The last of his father’s reputation brought him in, and lead him right to his sickbed, and this moment of quiet recollection.

“You’re quiet. I can see your eyes are distant, even in this low light.” Alessandro spoke softly now that night had truly fallen. “There’s no need to revisit the past.”

Grantaire sighed, and looked at his friend. Alessandro smiled and raised a brow. Just before Grantaire spoke, he brushed a hand through his hair, an old old habit, and one that Grantaire was unfailingly fond of.

A flash of gold caught the candlelight – a poor, earthly reflection of the gleam in Alessandro’s eye.

“You’re married.”

The words nearly congealed in Grantaire’s mouth as he spoke them, and Alessandro’s soft, teasing gaze sobered.

“Yes. My… father found another girl willing to have me. To ‘salvage my reputation’ he said. Lucrezia, her name is.” His tone was light, but there was a crease between his brows that made Grantaire’s heart heavy.

“We were married a few months ago, but don’t fret, I’m in need of a wedding portrait, and there’s no one on God’s earth that I’d rather commission.” Alessandro’s smile was back, shining a little too brightly in the liquid half-light of the candle to be genuine.

Grantaire, who was never one to pass up an opportunity to armour himself in humour, returned the too-bright grin and asked

“Are you in the market for something a little more salacious? I know a man with a really excellent collection of lewd Greek pottery. I could make some copies for you. Perhaps update them and make them a little more contemporary?”

Alessandro laughed.

“You lying bastard. All these years and you haven’t lost your tell. You’ve an excellent poker face my friend, but your eyes give you away.”

The hand that had been resting on Grantaire’s thigh moved up to his chest and Alessandro followed it, leaning forward like a man testing his weight against something inevitable.

“ _Alé_.”

The old endearment floated between them until Alessandro chased it back to Grantaire’s lips. The kiss was laden with tender memories and rich wine, and deepened when Grantaire pulled Alessandro closer, tracing his neck in a heated caress. They broke a hair’s breadth apart.

“We’re moving to Milan. New opportunities. New blank clerk position. This army post is more ceremonial than martial. I have a command but I’ll be putting it aside gladly after this. Plus living here with her is. Difficult. I remember… us. You.”  He smoothed out the rough words with a soothing hand that followed the rough curves and flat planes of Grantaire’s face. His thumb found the sweeping valley between cheek and eye and wiped away the tears that were quietly pooling there.

Grantaire didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry.” Alessandro whispered as he pressed a final kiss to Grantaire’s lips.

***

Alessandro found that moving away from Grantaire – finally letting go of his banked heat and graceful sensuality – was nearly impossible. He’d never lied about his feelings for Grantaire. He hated to see a look of agonised hope in his best friend’s eyes. There was no way he could atone for his cowardice. Grantaire begged him to follow, to leave both of their fathers behind and start fresh. Milan, Rome, abroad, he could still hear the desperate pleading that made Grantaire hoarse on the night before he was to leave for his apprenticeship. The truth was, Alessandro thought in this final moment of reflection on the past, that he was too weak. Florence was comfort, a job, familiar cobbles and familiar faces. Life on the road was uncertain with a foggy future, hardship and secrets. Leaving Florence now was a penance. He was now to exile himself up north to Milan with his quaint, religious wife, bank stamps, and polite manners. He had been hesitant to even join the vanguard as part of a ceremonial delegation. However, he used is acquiescence as leverage to secure a new bank position in Milan. Even with these thoughts weighing him down, whispering at him to stay here with Grantaire, he finally moved his hand from Grantaire’s nape where it had settled as they kissed. Alessandro let it follow the steady beat of Grantaire’s pulse down to his legs, trying to let his final touches say what should have been said in their boyhood. Alessandro brushed his hair out of his eyes and looked back up at Grantaire’s face like a second-rate Orpheus.

His eyes, always like molten gold, where dulled and brassy, his deep brown curls where flattened and brittle by his bedrest. It was a morbid reflection of their nights together, and they both drew deep breaths in tandem, swimming through past back to the present like they were fighting a tide.

Grantaire couldn’t bear to see a beloved face so marked by sadness, but he didn’t look away.

“God go with you” Grantaire mumbled, some kind of ironic request.

Alessandro paused, framed in the tent flap. His eyes had never been so green, nor his legs so well-turned. His face, never as clear and carefree as it was in that moment, framed by the black velvet sky. The door was a portal to years that had already run their course, and Alessandro was picture-perfect.

“When have you ever known that to be the case _amore_?”

A last smile.

Grantaire lay back down when the flap slithered back into place, like it was bashful for having intruded on their final passionate exchange. He passed the time travelling between awake and asleep feeling the gentle flow of tears down his face.

***

The next morning, it became clear that the rumours of a siege are unfounded. Charles VIII and the French forces had arrived, _anno domini_ 1494, in a huge snaking convoy. Envoys ran an almost ceaseless river between the camp and the city, currying favour and promises of peaceful passing on slips of folded paper if the demands enclosed were met with calm acquiescence.

The flap opened one day, soon after their arrival in early November, and Grantaire turned to look out of habit, the worsening infection in his leg making him weak, listless and desperately looking for distractions.

It was as if the sun burst into the tent, burning the stench of sickness and death from the air. The glare from the snowy surrounds was diamond-white, nearly obscuring the young man standing peevishly in the opening. His hair blond curled up from his head and the backlighting from the limp winter sun outside bestowing upon him nothing less than a full corona. His French armour was embellished with decorative rivets that bloomed in tiny strands of _fleurs de lys_ that followed the curves of his chest and shoulders. Grantaire could see, mustering his attention through the clingy haze of illness, that if he stood, the man would easily stand a head above him. He quietly, and with a feeble attempt at his usual sardonic approach to the turmoil of life in Tuscany, cursed his inferior Italic genetics. What use were they in the face of Northern giants? Lucky that the rumours of rape, pillage and siege were merely inflammatory gossip. Surely, this race of gods would have levelled even the de’ Medici Empire, solid and protected as it was in the shadow of the Apennines by the unparalleled insurance of a banking empire that had sticky fingers throughout Europe, had it come to all out warfare. He pitied the Kingdom of Naples further to the south – Charles’ final destination. He wished them good luck against these titans privately in his own mind, lamenting the fact that he had no drink to toast them with, nor one to pour a libation for his soon-to-be-dead brothers in arms, and for the foolish Kingdom of Spain across the waters.

The sun still streamed into the tent. He focused back on the young man, still standing there, frowning with a fierce concentration. He was not wearing his complete battle armour, just the breastplate, and his pearly doublet showed beneath it. The slashed sleaves were lined with a deep, sumptuous blue that matched his hose. He was calling out in that rough-smooth foreign voice, and when no answer came, he turned on the heel of his well-tooled leather boots and the flap fell back over the tent door, leaving Grantaire alone in his own private purgatory once again.  


***

The next day the tent flap opened again, and in stepped the polar opposite of previous day’s unexpected caller.

He was at least as tall as the first young man, Grantaire guessed, but dark in all the ways the other young man was fair. His hair curled close to his forehead, and his eyes were deep brown. He was wearing an olive green doublet, and the fashionable slashes at his sleeves were a soft tan that complimented the darker brown of his hose. He looked calmly around the canvas-walled space, silently cataloguing the contents of what was an embarrassingly rudimentary medical tent. He finally turned to look at Grantaire and his eyebrows knit together, leaving Grantaire feeling like one small part of an important calculation. They held each other’s gaze for an infinite moment, the frown on the visitor’s face deepening into something Grantaire was unsettled by, a molten anger. Until the moment collapsed and he swept out of the tent without so much as an explanation, nor a solitary word.

***

This new face, and frankly unsettling silent exchange, plagued Grantaire for the whole of the next day. It made him surly, and he barked for water, wine, women, or at the very least, some paper and ink.  None of these requests were honoured, and were met with nothing more than rolled eyes and quiet sighs of exasperation. He fell in and out of fitful sleep, until a fever set in and distorted his senses. In his more lucid moments, he chastised himself, knowing that his agitated mind only inflamed the infection his leg.

Foreign accents sounded around him, jarring and plush, reminding curiously of the sensation of fidgeting with his court velvets and brushing them up along his sleeves against the grain.

The unfamiliar voices overwhelmed him with enough curiosity to open his eyes. Above him, swimming out of the evening gloom, were the two new faces he’d seen so briefly in the tent flap. He wanted to question them, demand what they’re doing here in their enemies’ medical tent, but he finds himself unable to summon the question. He blinks tiredly, before falling back into the uncomplicated realm of sleep, feeling a cool cloth gently follow the path of his hairline along his forehead.

***

When he woke, the shock of sensation hit. He had expected the quiet realm of death to meet him, feeling through the murk of unconsciousness that his infection was worsening. The accompanying burning fever seemed to be the blessing of holy fire that would finally separate his soul from his body, cleansing him of sickness and his earthly sins. He found the strength in his arms to move his hands to his eyes. As he scrubbed them over his face, he noticed through his rapidly clearing vision that he wasn’t alone. The same unfamiliar face is sitting placidly cross-legged next to his pallet.

“You’ve awoken.”

There’s an uncommon lilt to the Latin and it takes Grantaire a moment to realise he understood the remark. It was not a question, so Grantaire gathers his wits and meets the deep brown eyes surveying him seriously across what is surely an imprudent amount of space to put between oneself and a sick, likely dying, man.

The gaze does not waver, and Grantaire finds himself warming under the scrutiny. He’s wearing a loser linen tunic today, in a pristine white in contrast to the dark brown hose he was still favouring.

“Yes I did. I… don’t know you.”

Grantaire finds his voice, and summons up his Latin, a struggle he was in this moment glad his father insisted he grapple with as a school boy.

“No. You don’t. My name is Combeferre. I’m a physician.”

Grantaire can’t quite parse the name, but doesn’t linger over it in an attempt to puzzle it out into something his fumbling Florentine mouth could manage. Instead, he asks:

“Should you be this close to me? Surely I don’t need to explain miasma to a physician?”

He swears the shrewd eyes warm for a moment, before cooling back into an attitude of professional appraisal.

“No. You’re recovering. I cut away some of the infected flesh while you were asleep and instructed the _physicians_ to apply a few different salves to make sure the wound heals and the infection doesn’t return.”

Grantaire does not miss the tone of dismissal that marks the word ‘physician’ in what should be a bland recital of medical procedure watered down for the lay patient. He smiles at his patron saint.

“Thank you. I owe you my life, and my leg. Well, whatever value you place on the life and leg of an intransigent foe in a field hospital at least.”

Combeferre smiles, a warm thing that spreads across his face like sunshine over water.

“I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow.”

Grantaire, a failed accountant, an unlucky soldier, and a disappointing son, feels better for the promise.

***

Grantaire waits for his next visit all day with increasing impatience. The other physicians deign to follow the French physicians’ instructions and change his bandages at least once. Grantaire, for his part, bares it with little grace, complaining to them that he would have died if not for the compassion and clearly vastly superior skill of his apparent enemy. Perhaps, he posits loudly after a particularly long stretch of being ignored by all that passed him, that it would be for the best if Charles’ campaign is successful, if this was the height of medical practice in France in comparison to the meanest rudiments they were subjected to here in Florence. Charles could, Grantaire continued to loudly explain, with his benevolence and clear devotion to God and the Pope, improve things for Naples, perhaps all of the states on the peninsula. These deliberately inflammatory remarks where met with predictably dark looks of mingled shock and outrage. Grantaire held the gaze of one particular apprentice, Paolo. Young Paolo was convinced of his own intelligence, prided himself on his loyalty to his city and his family and to his studies in the realm of medicine. Grantaire found him insolent, snobbish and close-minded. So he made sure his comments came with a garishly bright smile. Paolo pursed his thin lips and simply turned away.

He knew too well the consequences of engaging with Grantaire in any kind of civic debate. Grantaire and Paolo had already fallen on each other in a heated debate about the virtues of different styles of government, days before. Paolo had not come off well trying to rebut Grantaire’s sudden monarchist leanings. He started with a shaky response about Roman virtue and public life, and ended with the physician he was studying with cuffing him on the back of the head saying:

“Rhetoric is for philosophers, politicians and drunken jesters like this sorry excuse for a soldier here. You mind your studies and perhaps, if God should find it in his infinite compassion to hold his hand over you, you will find yourself a qualified physician with important patients of your own to care for one day. Back to work.”

Grantaire smiled with even more obnoxious verve at the memory. Lost in the glow of a good argument, and the sense of righteous satisfaction that comes with seeing an upstart taken down a peg, he didn’t notice the return of his new friend.

“You look much improved from yesterday, sir.”

Grantaire looked over at him and laughed.

“Sir. That’s quite the first time anyone has called me such a thing, and more than probably the last time too. Please. Sit. What can I have my servants fetch you? Wine? Song? Finer and more female company than mine?” He raised an a suggestive eyebrow and enjoyed the chuckle that bubbled up in his new companion at his remarks.

“No. No. I’m doing my rounds, and I can’t have a foggy head while I see to my patients. I will sit with you a while though. I heard you needling that poor young man. What did he do to merit such a thing? He seemed in quite a dark mood when he left the tent. All but pushed past me as though I was the tent flap.”

“Who? Oh, Paolo? That’s too long a story.” Grantaire patted the ground beside his pallet. “Please. I’m sick and I shouldn’t be required to crane my neck to look at you.”  
  
Combeferre obliged him and sat. He was wearing again wearing his plain linen tunic and dark woollen hose that Grantaire had come to recognise as a sign that his visitor was there on the official business of doctoring. He crossed his legs and brushed his hand over the fabric in his lap, smoothing it. He picked at loose strands and asked, without looking up from his fussing, “So. How do you feel today?”

Grantaire was busy watching the motion of his hands, neat and sure. “Oh much better thank you. I’m arguing again, so I think that means God will keep me here on earth a while longer.”

Combeferre smiled. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Well, it looks like they’ve been following my instructions with your leg, so perhaps I’ll just –“

“Wait! Please! I’m in need of company, and I won’t lie and say I’m not curious about you. Grant a dying man this last indulgence?” Grantaire was desperate for company. Alessandro had not returned, and now that he was regaining his strength, his bedrest was more of a frustration to him than ever.

“Alright. I can stay a while longer” Combeferre answered, lowering himself back down next to the pallet.

“So. How did you come to be on this frozen patch of peninsula? Surely you’d prefer somewhere warmer?” Grantaire tried to keep his curiosity in check, but he felt he was certainly showing his hand.

Combeferre considered the question for a moment, as though deciding where to begin his answer. “I’m the personal physician of my lord. He received a royal commission to lead the vanguard, and requested that I accompany him on this campaign.”

“Ah of course. The blond man who’s hard to look at, in here shouting for you the other day.” Grantaire broke into Combeferre’s explanation absentmindedly, and did not notice the eyebrow that was raised in his direction.

“Hard to look at? That’s certainly the first time he’s been described that way.” Even in his personal reverie, Grantaire didn’t miss the arch tone.

“Oh, I mean like the sun. Helios himself doesn’t glare with as much ferocity.”

“I… suppose?”

“I’m sorry. I was distracted. Please continue? How did you come to be a personal physician?”

Combeferre surveyed him with an appraising look and shifted a little in his perfectly composed seat.

“I wanted to be an astronomer. My father made me see sense. Medicine is career that guarantees status. My father was an artisan. He moved from Arabia to Africa to Paris. He wanted a son to carry his name. Little does he know, his son carries a bastardised French version of his name. I was apprenticed to a physician in service of an old French family. My father arranged the apprenticeship with his business acumen. My mother cried to send me away. Enjolras – or Helios if you’d rather, was about my age when I was taken on. We became friends. Took lessons together. Talked politics. We’ve been together ever since. We’re the last two of the big old family. An immigrant and an unmarried son. Scions.”

It was a speech touched with an old bitterness.

“My father disliked me because I couldn’t understand mathematics” was Grantaire’s only reply.

Combeferre laughed.

“Don’t laugh. What you see before you here is the product of a father’s contempt. I don’t understand mathematics, but love. Love I understand.” Grantaire sighed, and shifted onto his elbow and finds his hand brushing Combeferre’s fingers. In that moment, a connection sprung into being, like a miniature orbit path. They looked at each other for a long moment.

“My story is a little tawdrier. My father didn’t approve of me. My skills were wasteful flights of fancy; my loves were a sin and a scandal. He only used his business acumen – thank you for the phrase – to arrange an artist’s apprenticeship for me to get me away from his carefully preserved reputation. A reputation that, I needn’t add,  was dearer to him than his own child.”

He paused. Combeferre’s face was impassive and betrayed nothing of his opinions about this admission. An admission Grantaire felt should have been accompanied with some greater drama. A thunderclap, the appearance of his father’s horrified, judgemental ghost – something to convey the difficulty of speaking about the private wounds he’d nursed for so long with such candour. Perhaps it’s easier to speak of wounds with a doctor, he thought to himself, even if they aren’t of the flesh.

“The apprenticeship fell through and I slunk home, ready to die out here on the battlefield and recoup some honour. Alas, an idiot pikeman and your competence with medicine seem to have thwarted my father’s wishes.”

Combeferre, who seemed even graver than usual, nodded and said “I’m glad.”

“Well we seem to be well-acquainted now that we’ve aired our grievances. Thank you keeping me company.”

“You’re an exemplary patient. But, tomorrow, we’ll get you up and walking.”

Combeferre lifted himself up in a smooth, feline motion and looked back at Grantaire as he left, no doubt off in search of his liege.

***

By the following Tuesday he was strong enough to start taking longer walks outside, thanks to the efforts of Combeferre. They had spent a lot of time together over that stretch of time, Combeferre thought to himself. He had become intimately acquainted with his sense of humour and his magpie nest of a mind. There was every chance they could discuss the old philosophers, the virtues of man, or outrageous Roman poetry. The echoes of these conversations sat like wine in Combeferre’s veins. Made him a little giddy and pleased to be in this man’s – this walking contradiction of man – esteem. Like wine, he knew these feelings were tinged with creeping danger. New and keen like a whetted sword. Yet the warmth, the affection – it buoyed him, made him smile. Drew him back to the sorry little triage tent again and again. On that particular Tuesday, Combeferre was busily reciting the names of Jupiter’s moons to Grantaire to keep his mind off the pain and focused on his voice and the mechanics of moving his muscles to strengthen them, when Enjolras, splendid as always, found them both and walked up to them without Combeferre noticing.

Grantaire looked up from the laborious task of focusing on where to place his weakened foot when Enjolras called out with a rapid flourish of French, the corner of his mouth hitched up and a curious shimmer in his deep blue eyes. Combeferre shifted from Latin to French and back again without pause. Enjolras continued talked with the surety of a man who was used to being listened to and obeyed, switching to Latin just as easily.

“We haven’t been formally introduced. Where are Combeferre’s manners? Well met, Florentine.”

“Well met, Northern giant. Please call me Grantaire.”

“And please call me Enjolras.”

“I will not, because I can’t pronounce it. We’ll have to compromise.”

“Not if God himself wished it. Enjolras or death, knave.” Enjolras’ tone hadn’t changed from its brusque clip, but the crinkles by his eyes gave the solemn declaration away as a joke.

 To Grantaire’s great surprise, Combeferre laughed. An ungainly, sorting bray that was endearing as it was infectious. Once the three regained their composure, Enjolras continued.

“News from the city.”

The mood was suddenly heavy.

“There are already talks to move the troops on towards Naples. Charles’ delegates have made trouble with the de’ Medici. One was run out of the city. We can’t afford to get caught up in local politics. We’re here with a purpose. A holy purpose at that.”

This report from Enjolras is particularly grim. For a moment the three were friends, but with a few words, the spell was broken and they were once again opposing forces. The realisation hit the huddled group at the same time, sending a dark shiver through them all.

Enjolras, falling back on his military training, continues to give his dispassionate report. The words were suddenly acrid in his mouth. Within Florence’s walls, they were nothing but information, an essential dispatch to bring back to camp and the King. Now, at the shrine of a budding friendship, they were sulphurous. He glanced at Combeferre. His usual measured calm had settled back on to his face where the spark of pleasure had animated it just moments before. It hurt him to see that, he had clearly interrupted his friend and his new Florentine… charge.  Enjolras didn’t dare characterise something that was clearly still a fledgling. He wouldn’t speak for Combeferre and never had. Concern beat in his pulse for a moment. He could see what the imminent departure would do to this tender connection, and what that would mean for his dearest friend. He mapped Combeferre’s arm curled around the other man’s waist, fingers softly splayed over the hip in a fashion that Enjolras could not rightly say was professional. The fingers twitched minutely inside the gloves Enjolras himself had given Combeferre as a gift for the long winter rides ahead of them. They quested over the rough cloth of the man’s loose tunic, the movements not the empiric gestures of physician to patient. Concern gave way to molten worry as he saw the road ahead as clear and catastrophic as a battle stratagem. He pushed it aside, regretting the tiny, affectionate jibe that startled Combeferre and announced his intrusion.

He looked at the other man - took in his wiry hair that cascaded in unruly waves across his forehead and the light brown eyes that held a canny glow. He found in this man, this enemy, something that he recognised in himself. There was intelligence there, the ability to truly see, but it was burdened. Shuttered away. It needed further quantification. He saw too, the tender curve of the fingers that grasped Combeferre’s shoulder for balance. He let his eyes trace it for a moment, a bittersweet scouting mission. He blinked to clear the outline – tanned flesh on white tabard, kid gloves on smudged beige. He needed to talk to Combeferre.

For now, he had an order to carry out.

Grantaire asked “What’s the mission? What’s brought France down on us like this?”

Enjolras braced himself with a minute shift of his weight that squared his hips and shoulders. He felt the heels of his boots sink a little further into the slushy ground.

“It’s a question of fealty, however, with the added complication of religion.”

Grantaire’s eyebrows questioned Enjolras’ bland statement without words.

“Ferdinand I of Naples refused to pay his dues to Pope Innocent VIII and so the Holy Father revoked his right to belong to the Church and called on Charles’… tenuous connection to the royal house of Naples to claim the kingdom as his own.”

Grantaire paused to consider this, and Enjolras found waiting for his words to be weighed a disconcerting experience.

“You speak like a soldier, but the tone… could you be a republican sir? Worse still, an agnostic?”

There was a smile in the words but Enjolras felt exposed, suddenly an easy target in royal blue on a snowy patch of foreign ground.

Combeferre intervened. “Enjolras is a revolutionary. In every sense of the word, but equally, there is none more loyal to his duty that you could care to name.”

Enjolras found his breath a little easier. Looking at his friend, he sees their childhood together, the weight of their promise to see out this campaign, no matter what. He draws on the quiet belief he finds in Combeferre’s eyes, and continues.

“This squabble was eventually put to rest when Innocent died a few years ago. However, the offer was never officially revoked or absolved, and thus, when it suited Ludovico Sforza in Milan, he brought it up again. Sforza used the marriage of his niece to the Holy Roman Emperor to procure the title of Duke for himself. Alfonso II, Ferdinand’s heir, challenged his legitimacy for that position as he too, had a claim to Milan.”

Enjolras paused, seeing a curious pain in Grantaire’s eyes.

For his part, Grantaire’s thoughts were consumed with Alessandro, the word Milan was a spur to his treacherous memory of their final goodbye. He noticed that his two companions were looking at him, Enjolras trying to parse the sudden tightening of his demeanour, while Combeferre’s fingers had picked out a subtle rhythm along the curve of his hip, and had turned to look down at him, tucked against his side as he was. The only recourse available to Grantaire in that moment was to bring their attention back onto the frightening farce of titles and legacy that lay before them, and distract them from the memories he had no wish to share with them.

“So, how does that involve France? This is something that Naples and Milan must settle themselves, surely.”

“Ludovico sought French aid to quiet Alfonso. He kept stock of that apple of discord that was Innocent’s original offer and tossed it squarely into Charles’ court. This was a recent development, as old Ferdinand died earlier this year. Two men, it seems, picked the apple up and managed to convince Charles that acting on Innocent’s order was in his best interest. One of these, Étienne de Vesc, is a relation of mine, and he used his influence to get me this post. The other is a Cardinal with what is in my opinion, an inclement score to settle with our current Holy Father. Milan welcomed us gladly, and now, we’re here. Negotiations to open Florence are nearly finalised. At that time, we’ll have to move on for the Papal States, and then the south.”

There was a beat of silence, as the complex stupidity of rulership settled into the midst of their previous carefree cheerfulness.

“Huh. Well, no doubt the great Kingdom of France is a defender of the holiest writs.”

Combeferre intervened before silence huddled around them again, blown in on the crisp winter wind and foreboding tidings.  

“This is a serious report. Surely you must meet with the generals? Thank you for finding me and telling us both. I’ll just finish up here and join you at the camp.”

Enjolras did not allow himself to bristle under the dismissal, things were often so easy and familiar with them that they had no need to stand on ceremony. He was however, a little hurt to be so kindly hurried away. He knew that they would talk about this, and the anticipation of what would not be an easy conversation hung like ballast from his limbs. He nodded and walked away to the French encampment, controlling his desire to look back.

Combeferre and Grantaire watched him go, picking his way through the tents. Though each side was on friendly terms, there was still danger for Enjolras and Combeferre walking through the Florentine vanguard camp. Enjolras, for his part, walked tall and with confidence, sword hanging in its scabbard at his belt. His tunic was gold today, slashed sleaves showing a pearly white. He shone in the sunlight, and reflected gold spangles on the ground as he walked. Grantaire looked at him that moment, and saw as if by divine revelation, a man of true justice. Enjolras did not agree with the campaign, that much was clear.  Even so, he carried out his role with integrity.

“He’d be a revolutionary if he could, wouldn’t he?”

Combeferre didn’t look at Grantaire.

“Yes. He taught me that being free was the greatest boon a man could have on this earth, more than power, glory, or title. I learnt that watching him accept the bridle of duty however, so don’t judge him for playing his part.”

“I wasn’t. I admire him and wouldn’t want to meet him on the wrong side of the battlefield, martial or political.”  The sincerity of Grantaire’s statement pulled Combeferre around to face him, but his expression was guarded.

“Let’s get you back into the tent. You’ve done very well with your leg today.”

***

Later, Combeferre found Enjolras in the tent they shared.

“Is it true?”

Enjolras looked up from the papers he was reading, an apprehensive tightness in his chest sprung around his ribs at the quiet plea in his friend’s voice. Combeferre was looking stricken, his usually scrupulously neat clothing wind-ruffled by the half-jog, half-walk between the Florentine camp and their tent in the middle of the French army’s camp. He couldn’t lie.

“Yes, Combeferre, we’ll be through the city in a few days’ time. No later.”

Combeferre sagged and sat next to Enjolras on what passed for a bed for a nobleman in the field of battle, or rather, friendly half-siege in this case. While the appointment of their tent was better than what Grantaire had put up with - flimsy pallet in the middle of winter and shocking medical malpractice, it wasn’t much better. Not even Enjolras’ status as minor royalty could ensure they were always warm and comfortable, less than halfway through their damnable winter excursion. Enjolras set aside his papers and laid a hand on his friend’s knee.

“Combeferre, will you tell me what’s wrong?”

Enjolras knew. Knew by the way he laughed, by the way he talked about astronomy and entomology, by the way his fingers curled and his arms enclosed. As his liege, but more importantly, as his friend, he needed Combeferre to talk about this. Leech the poison and lance the boil, play the physician and heal this rift before the situation became desperate and the infection followed them throughout this drab, divided and frankly, farcical peninsula and all the way home again to France.

Combeferre looked at him, vulnerable in his distress.

“I don’t want to leave him. He – he has nothing here. No family, Enjolras, barely a friend. He was content to die and the doctors would have let him, would have called it God’s will. That’s not true, and you know it, as atheist as you are.”

Enjolras turned to face him, and took both hands in his. Looking down at their clasped hands, like so many pictures of penitent prayer, and hating for a moment the memories he saw there, delicately nestled between their palms. Old voices echoed in his head “Your father is a fine and noble man for taking in this Saracen. May God use him and you, in due course, to bring this poor boy into the true communion of the Church.” That one, casually ignorant comment from a Bishop marked the moment he stopped praying.

He had been 13.

From that moment, any fervour he formerly felt from the Church was poured into ensuring Combeferre felt no shame, no fear for the different customs he practiced, the different prayers he said. He had admitted to Enjolras that it made him feel as though he was still at home with his parents in Paris, not trapped in the northern strongholds of a satellite branch of the House of Lorraine. Now, years later, here they were, away from what was their home on a fool’s errand of a dead Pope at the urging of a Cardinal who hated the current Pope; all for a scrap of land that belonged to neither of the two greatest proponents of its recapture. Enjolras could hardly stand it, but his current position as an important envoy, and for his future position at court as a man who could use his voice to do good and dismantle these old prejudices depended on his current obedience. Charles VIII, like all kings, looked favourably on those who served him respectfully and competently, and Enjolras desired nothing more than to use that favour for his own ends in the future. In that moment however, looking into the naked emotion that glossed Combeferre’s eyes and put a tremble the hands clasped tightly in Enjolras’, he was ready to abandon it. He would, if it was necessary, admit to treason to allow Combeferre to stay here in Florence, if that would make him happy. It didn’t matter that he had pushed for a peaceful agreement of passage through Florence, it didn’t matter that he had argued for hours that they need not come to open battle as they had no quarrel with Florence, and it didn’t matter that he fought to keep the peace between the de’ Medici and cool that dangerous embers that saw Peiro de’ Medici run from the city and worked long hours with the new Florentine Republic to ensure their passage was a peaceful one. He wanted, more than anything, for Combeferre to be happy.

Enjolras remembered the first day Combeferre found Grantaire all but rotting in the tent. He had been furious. His usual cool composure in the face of the broken human body was swept away by his compassion. Combeferre’s compassion was something that Enjolras had always admired about him. He almost envied how it stirred up and bubbled over like a river of healing, whereas Enjolras always kept his tucked into his doublet and used it as a compass for his politics. He thought too, of all the times over the past three weeks where Combeferre’s face was shining with secret smiles and soft, dewy eyes.

“Combeferre, is that the real reason?”

Asking the question was selfish. A final needle to stitch closed a private longing.

Combeferre held his gaze.

“I… love him.”

The admission was careful and gentle. Enjolras nodded, and clasped Combeferre’s hands tighter.

“Then we need a plan.”

***

Grantaire lay back, propped up on his elbows. Combeferre had left in a hurry after Enjolras’ report, which concerned Grantaire. His days were now defined not in hours but into two dismally opposed halves – with Combeferre and without Combeferre. For the rest of the week, Combeferre had forced him up and around the tent in laboriously slow walks. The muscles in his legs were starting to atrophy, and the new pink flesh of his calf needed to be stretched to ensure that it didn’t heal tight and worsen the limp Grantaire was sure to have. His days no longer had minutes, but rather seconds where Combeferre’s arm was around his waist, holding him steady, carrying his weight and warming him to the bone, and seconds where he had no comfort but his own recovering body. The way he fit against the taller man’s side coloured his dreams and his cheeks when he awoke and remembered the desires that unfolded behind his eyelids.

Over the past few weeks, they had talked of everything and nothing- laughed together and argued together. Art and science were the main themes of their hours spent together. During those talks and increasingly long walks, these two disciplines were reunited like long parted lovers by the thoughts and passions that Combeferre and Grantaire shared with and explained to each other. Soon the cool examining hands that pressed with the gentle, firm professionalism of a doctor on his leg became suffused with heat and brushed over his skin like the touches could express a sentiment the mind was not yet ready to reveal, and the mouth not yet capable of articulating.  The revelation that their private moments would soon be packed away with the bunting and banners because of clever, expedient diplomacy was a sour thought. If he were able, he would have walked into the French camp stayed there.

Damn Florence and damn her lilies. Guiltily, he blamed Enjolras for his part in the negotiations. The man was indomitable and saved lives with his well-put arguments.

As the afternoon passed, he ate the watery broth that was presented to him and sopped the dry bread that came with it in the dregs.

With nothing better to fill his time, he slept.

He awoke to a hand on his cheek.

“Combeferre what’s wro-“

The hand on his cheek quickly fluttered over his lips and pressed a finger to them, asking soundlessly for quiet. Combeferre shifted to sit next to Grantaire on his pallet. His hand moved back to the hem of his long, plain linen tunic – dark brown for stealth rather than his usual clean white for doctoring.

“Grantaire. I have to tell you that… we’re leaving. Enjolras was called into the city after we left you to finalise the agreement. The gates open the day after tomorrow. The seventeenth.”

The words were a blow, like the pike lodged in his ribs and snagged there, rather than his calf. He was barely brave enough to ask what he knew he needed to know.

“What does this mean… for us because I-“

This time, rather than a cold finger asking for pause, warm lips met his. Grantaire felt the world unspooling from that point of contact, the canvas walls and winter chill were distant now. The only real thing was the new warmth that was fanning itself into a consuming sunburst as they moved together.

Grantaire pulled away.

“But… what will I do now? What will be left for me? I couldn’t die in battle, you didn’t let that fucking fever take me and now you’re just going to leave?”

Combeferre put a gentle hand on his arm but didn’t look at him.

“Yes. Yes I will. Enjolras and I tried to come up with a plan but it was too risky. There’s…. nothing we can do.”

Combeferre wiped a hand along the ridge of his cheek. Grantaire pulled himself up to sit awkwardly behind him. He sagged over and leant on the defeated curve of Combeferre’s back, wrapping an arm around his middle just as Combeferre had done for him over the past few weeks. They both sit quietly, drawing calm from their syncopated breaths.

“Tomorrow Enjolras and the other envoys will be hosted in the city. The day after, we move through. The camp is already starting to pack away what can be. We need to turn our attention to the Papal States. His majesty needs permission to move through, and confirm his intentions for Naples.”

Grantaire understood. He understood that this was a goodbye. He felt sure that Combeferre had used the confusion and flurry of dismantling a camp that had stood for nearly a month was the perfect cover to slip through one more time. He didn’t stop the tears that slid down his nose and landed on the dark linen of Combeferre’s tunic. They made patches of pure pitch on the brown linen, somehow darkening it even more.

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

Grantaire’s question was muffled against Combeferre’s shoulder blades. He felt them shift and unknot, knowing the answer before Combeferre’s soft response.

“Yes. Of course.”

They lay back down together, Combeferre’s head on Grantaire’s chest. The night passed like an expedition. Hands and mouths mapped as much terrain as they could, moving aside rough linen, fording dammed desires and following natural rhythms for guidance. They moved together like there was no morning, just endless starlight. Grantaire drew a thousand breathtaking masterpieces on Combeferre’s back and  Combeferre discovered a thousand new constellations on Grantaire’s chest, each more beautiful and scintillating as the last. Happy sobs and tragic laughter punctuated the moments between dream and reality, and just as dawn began to draw back the covers of night with rosy fingers, they found sleep in the curtain wall of their arms.

***

The next day, as the French troops were dragging their war machines into marching formation, Grantaire begged an indifferent doctor for a knife.

***

By the end of January, the troops were approaching Naples, having successfully negotiated their passing through the Papal States and crossing into the southern kingdom.  Enjolras and Combeferre were riding side-by-side. Continuing as an official envoy, Enjolras and Combeferre, who never strayed from his place at his side, were often required to move back and forth through the column, passing messages between soldiers, and occasionally to the Swiss mercenaries.

Enjolras pulls his horse next to Combeferre. They’re both resplendent in their best doublets. Combeferre’s is the dark navy of a night sky, slashed with black, while Enjolras’ is a vivid scarlet slashed with white. Combeferre is pensive and looks at Enjolras as he approaches. He absentmindedly patted his horse’s neck to soothe the snorts that the little jostle for position between their two mounts that comes with them finding their rhythm and falling into step in the column.

They fall into an easy conversation. Combeferre is grateful for Enjolras’ determined effort to keep his mind occupied over the past few months since leaving Florence. The first few days were terse and heavy, but Combeferre was tired of the concern seeping into every crevice of Enjolras’ face when he looked at him. He resolved not to think of Grantaire, and kept his memories of their last night together tucked in a secret, tender hollow between his ribs. As the rode, and talked amiably of this and that, a small contingent of the Swiss mercenaries passed them by. Combeferre looked past Enjolras to the passing soldiers. In the midst of the blank faces, he saw a pair of light brown eyes. The pair of eyes dropped him a wink and dragged themselves over his body warming him in ways the winter sun couldn’t. The soldier, not quite as tall as his fellows, was sitting stiffly in the saddle, and leaned down to rub his calf absently as he spurred his brown horse to keep up with the rest.

Combeferre looked back at Enjolras, whose concern had become a watery smile.

He looked up at the icy blue sky, happy to be under the Mediterranean sun.

**Author's Note:**

> This work has an accompanying piece of Art by infinite-mirrors [here on tumblr](http://infinite-mirrors.tumblr.com/post/149018069015/my-contribution-to-the-les-mis-big-bang-for-this). Please check it out it's the stuff of dreams.
> 
> You can come join me on tumblr [here](http://vbranium.tumblr.com).


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